P70: The Effect of Mindfulness and Acceptance-Based Group Therapy on Decreasing Fear of Scrutiny by Others in Patients with Social Anxiety Disorder

Social phobia is characterized by a fear of negative evaluation within social or performance situations, where individuals believe that they are under scrutiny and may be embarrassed (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The present study was carried out to examine the effectiveness of mindfulness and acceptance-based group therapy on decreasing fears of scrutiny by others in patients with social anxiety among female students. In the first stage, social phobia inventrory (SPIN) (Conor et al, 2000) was administrated to 402 female student of Shahed University. In the second stage 23 socially anxious student screened by SPIN and (Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV) (SCID-I) (First et al,1996) were randomly assigned to experimental group (12 subjects) and control group (11subjects). Then mindfulness and acceptance-based group therapy administered to the experimental group, while control group didn`t attend in any treatment session. All participants completed measure of social phobia scale (Mattick and Clarke, 1989) at pre-treatment and post-treatment. The result of Mann Whitney test revealed significant reduction in fear of scrutiny by others (Z=-3.45, P<0.0001) in experimental group than control group. In sum, mindfulness and acceptance-based group therapy can improve fear of scrutiny by others among a sample of Iranian female students. Therefore a ground has been provided to apply this approach preliminary in psychological centers on patients with social anxiety disorder.